NASA is preparing to launch a mission to deliberately smash a spacecraft into an asteroid—a test run should humanity ever need to stop a giant space rock from wiping out life on Earth.

It may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) is a real proof-of-concept experiment, blasting off at 10:21 pm Pacific Time Tuesday (0621 GMT Wednesday) aboard a SpaceX rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Its target object: Dimorphos, a "moonlet" around 525 feet (160 meters, or two Statues of Liberty) wide, circling a much larger asteroid called Didymos (2,500 feet or 780 meters in diameter), which together orbit the Sun.

UCLA astronomers have identified 366 new exoplanets, thanks in large part to an algorithm developed by a UCLA postdoctoral scholar. Among their most noteworthy findings is a planetary system that comprises a star and at least two gas giant planets, each roughly the size of Saturn and located unusually close to one another.

The discoveries are described in a paper published today in the Astronomical Journal.

The term "exoplanets" is used to describe planets outside of our own solar system.

It's been 70 years since physicist Enrico Fermi asked his famous question: "Where is everybody?" And yet, the tyranny of the Fermi Paradox is still with us and will continue to be until definitive evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) is found. In the meantime, scientists are forced to speculate as to why we haven't found any yet and, more importantly, what we should be looking for. By focusing their search efforts, researchers hope to determine whether we are alone in the universe.

In a recent study, two researchers from the University of Liège and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recommend that we look for evidence of transmissions from our solar system.